2009

2010

VStar prototype for 1st Citizen Sky workshop. 3 months of spare time development from May

2009 collaboration with AAVSO staff first Citizen Sky participant: Mike Umbricht

testing, domain expertise (Brown University)

Bug fixes & changes based upon August 2009 Chicago workshop feedback.

November 2009: first WebStart deployment.

Phase 1 feature set release based on initial requirements from AAVSO.

NACAA April 2010 VStar workshop in Canberra ideas & improvements resulted from this

January 2010: AAS poster about VStar Team.

David Benn: team lead, primary developer Michael Umbricht

Testing, encouragement, ideas Weber brothers (Adam, George):

code, patches, design discussions AAVSO Staff

Sara Beck, Arne Henden, Aaron Price, Doc Kinne, Rebecca Turner, Matt Templeton, Elizabeth Waagen

Grant Foster Developer of original DOS VStar Domain expert; guiding next steps for VStar

Numerous others with good intentions sometimes, understandably, “having a life”

prevents you from doing everything you might want to do.

VStar was used to plot light curves in Australian S&T article by Alan Plummer (at NACAA workshop, Southern Gems member).

Doc Kinne (AAVSO) remarked recently that we could use more team involvement for the project’s health; I agree.

Overwhelmingly, VStar development has been and continues to be a very positive experience. On a personal note, I’ve been looking for a volunteer

software project like this for a long time.

Rebecca asked at the end of this talk: What one piece of advice would you give a team leader? My answer was: Understand your limits, defer to

those with the knowledge and experience you lack.

Still plenty to do, so feel free to join the team!

http://www.citizensky.org/teams/vstar-software-development

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/vstar/index.php?title=Development_Process

http://www.citizensky.org/sites/default/files/VStar_AAS_poster%201.pdf